


Apparent Retrograde Motion

by syllogismos



Series: On the Sizes and Distances (of the Sun and Moon) [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Tea as Emotional Currency, Traumatic Brain Injury, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllogismos/pseuds/syllogismos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello,” Adhira answers. There are no introductions made on this ward, unless someone asks Adhira for <em>her</em> name, so she moves on immediately. “Do you have any questions?”</p>
<p>“Thank you, no. I spoke to the doctor yesterday. I assume there’s been no change.”</p>
<p>“No change,” Adhira confirms.</p>
<p>Tall and Lethal watches her work for a few minutes. In fact, he watches <em>her</em> rather curiously closely, rather than focusing on Prematurely Bald Coma. Then he turns and leaves without saying anything more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparent Retrograde Motion

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【翻译】逆行](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9895325) by [elbereth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbereth/pseuds/elbereth)



It’s 5:30 in the morning, and Adhira’s alarm clock is bleating weakly, a little warble at the end of each attempt at a _beep_. Adhira’s first thought is that the alarm clock needs fresh batteries, her second is to press snooze, and she reaches, getting so far as to lift an arm out from the warm cocoon of the duvet and fumble for the clock on the floor, but before she finds it she’s interrupted by a third thought, jolting: _the Kingsman contract_.

Thank _everything_ the alarm even went off at all because she’ll be sacked if she misses the car.

Quickly through shower, dressing (scrubs, easy), brushing her teeth (two minutes per recommendation), hair (no time to blow-dry, twisted up into a tight bun while still wet), make-up (light foundation, eyeliner, mascara). There would be time enough for toast, but damn it all, she forgot to buy more bread at the shop. A yogurt and an orange instead, the latter of which she only peels before grabbing her purse, coat, gloves. She can eat the orange segments in the car.

The drive is Adhira’s least favourite part of the Kingsman contract. Every time the sleek black Jag pulls up—6:32 a.m., on the dot—she has to fight the urge to look around to see if anyone’s watching as she opens the back door and ducks to get in. The smooth leather seats are posh as fuck but also uncomfortably cold in the chill of early morning. She says “Good morning,” to the driver as the tires roll back into motion every day, and he never responds beyond catching her eye in his rear-view, and even that’s difficult to see through the smoked glass of the barrier between them. Maybe the behind-the-barrier compartment is even sound-proof, it’s occurred to Adhira, although that seems slightly unlikely. What if there was an emergency?

Adhira is on the ward by seven, which means there’s even time for a tea in the lounge before the shift change. The tea at Kingsman is easily her favourite benefit of the contract; always freshly and perfectly brewed from leaves, not bags, with steamed milk available, and if it still gets served in paper cups, at least it’s paper and not styrofoam. This morning, the tea—even more perfect than remembered, at the perfect temperature and brewed to the perfect strength—makes up for the improvised breakfast and then some.

The cause of this contract came in three days ago. Adhira was brought in only yesterday: because now he’s stable and out of the I.C.U. He is the only stop on her rounds because she’s here, on this contract, to attend to his needs eight hours a day, rotating with her counterparts occupying complementary slices of the clock, until such a time as her services as a nurse are no longer needed.

She doesn’t know his name. She never knows their names. He’s tall, just shy of 1.9 metres, a slender but solid eleven and a half stone, although that number will be dropping very soon and quite quickly. His birthday isn’t on the chart, nor his precise age: instead there’s a multiple choice selection, and the circle next to the range 30–39 is filled in. Certainly far from old, not even middle-aged, but he’s prematurely bald except for a bit around the sides and back. It looks as though he usually keeps that shaved to the skin, but the last three days have resulted in a shadowy stubble growing in, not yet flecked with grey. Adhira would like to take on the duty of shaving it off, to put him back in the style with which he’s most comfortable, but that will have to wait until the sutures heal and the bandages come off.

When it’s important that the medical staff, including Adhira, know how an injury was sustained, they are briefed on it. When it’s not, they aren’t. This is a case of the latter: the idiosyncrasies of head traumas rarely align with their causes, so no aspect of treatment depends on knowledge of the event of injury. There’s also, unfortunately, just not much to be done in cases such as these, except to do what can be done to avoid the problems that can come from a long hospitalisation during coma—weight loss and muscular atrophy, various and sundry skin problems, including bed sores.

* * *

When the agent enters, Adhira is massaging her patient’s forearms and hands with lotion, both to moisturise the skin and to induce blood flow to the muscles and nerves. She’s working from a chair because she has the time and freedom to go slowly and be thorough.

“Hello,” the agent says. Adhira’s sure he’s one, although _agent of what?_ is still a legitimate question, and one she’s never going to ask. She’s certain if not from his suit alone, then from his carriage: confident yet restrained, displaying his ability to kill you with his bare hands without breaking a sweat but not swaggering with it because he doesn’t need to.

“Hello,” Adhira answers. There are no introductions made on this ward, unless someone asks Adhira for _her_ name, so she moves on immediately. “Do you have any questions?”

“Thank you, no. I spoke to the doctor yesterday. I assume there’s been no change.”

“No change,” Adhira confirms.

Tall and Lethal watches her work for a few minutes. In fact, he watches _her_ rather curiously closely, rather than focusing on Prematurely Bald Coma. Then he turns and leaves without saying anything more.

The next day Adhira greets him with a “Good morning,” and he returns it. He watches her work again for a pair of minutes before leaving.

On the third day, T&L comes later, with bags under his eyes and a less-than-immaculate suit. Adhira’s working on PBC’s feet, her chair shifted to the foot of the bed. T&L doesn’t watch her work, this time. He takes slow breaths and stares at PBC’s unmoving face, probably not very recognisable to him what with the intubation and the swelling and bruising still distorting the right side of his face.

Just when Adhira senses he’s about to turn to leave, she decides to act: “You could sit with him for a while, if you like. I could use a tea break.” She stands, offering the chair.

* * *

On the fourth day, T&L enters the room with two paper cups, one steaming with black tea, the other a third full of steamed milk. “I didn’t know how you take it,” he explains, then watches, eagle-eyed, as she pours steamed milk into the tea until it’s the tawny colour of a good Scotch, except opaque.

“Twenty minutes?”

He nods.

After twenty-two minutes have passed, she knocks softly to signal her return and only enters a moment later to find him already on his feet.

“I forgot to thank you earlier, for the tea: thank you.”

“Not at all.” He hesitates, not yet moving to leave the room. “I wondered–”

_Don’t ask me if he’s going to wake up,_ Adhira wills. _Or if he’s going to be the same. I don’t know._

“Is it silly to talk to him?” T&L asks, finally.

“Not at all,” Adhira echoes.

“Do you?”

“Sometimes,” she lies.

* * *

Adhira starts talking to PBC. She’s not quite sure why she hasn’t been; it’s usually how she works. He seems like a quiet man, maybe, or a man who likes the quiet, likes the space to think and work. If that’s what he prefers, it’s too bad now, because Adhira tells him the time and the weather ( _seven-fifteen and sunny for a change; I almost didn’t need gloves this morning_ ) before she moves on to other subjects. Some days it’s impersonal things—the news, especially America’s increasingly amusing Presidential vote recount in Florida, which allows her the opportunity to explain to a man in a coma the concept of a “hanging chad”, or pop culture, prattling on about recent films she’s liked ( _Billy Elliot_ , _Erin Brockovich_ ) or found underwhelming ( _Chocolat_ , _Traffic_ ).

The talking is good for another reason: it keeps Adhira from speculating about the life and work of the man under her care and the man who (clearly) cares for him. Speculation is not part of this job, and no conceivable good could come from it, so it’s best left aside as she works and chats, her fingers learning the scars from the pair of bullet wounds (back left, scapula and ribs) and the stab wound (right thigh, depending on the angle must have been worryingly close to the femoral). The shapes of the scar tissue relax into comments, instead of questions, after she’s been over them dozens of times with her fingers or a flannel.

Adhira stops taking a tea when she arrives in the morning because T&L has brought her one every day since that first when she offered him time alone with PBC in exchange for it, and too much tea leads to near-to-bursting desperation before lunch. He’s a quick study, not a surprise: the tea always has precisely the amount of milk she likes, and it’s always steaming hot.

As the countable days of the contract recede and it grows into countable weeks, there are gaps. A day or three when T&L doesn’t turn up, and Adhira feels the pinch of a dehydration headache beginning before lunch. She starts to worry, but tells herself her worry is a misplaced emotional reaction to the disturbance in her own routine, not to mention the lack of a hot beverage to soothe the hard chill of the morning. Still, she watches the clock swing through the minutes of the morning and never can quite pin down the one, the very minute when it feels appropriate to give up and fetch her own tea.

* * *

After a three-day long absence, T&L reappears on a Friday when Adhira’s agreed to three doubles through the weekend so that one of her counterparts can have a mini-break. After his late-morning visit, which he conducts looking wan, his suit actually looking _slept-in_ , T&L returns in the evening clearly fresh from a nap and a shower, and Adhira’s curiosity as to whether this second visit is a regular occurrence is satisfied immediately when the night receptionist gives him a friendly nod and he doesn’t turn a single head on his way through the ward to PBC’s room.

Calling it a ward is a misrepresentation, of course. This isn’t a hospital. The reception area isn’t so much reception and admission as surveillance and security. The rooms are all private and well-appointed: high thread count linens; polished hardwood furniture, aside from the mechanised medical beds, carts, and trays; well-tended plants; and tasteful prints of classics, if slightly unconventional in their selection. PBC’s room has a medium-sized print, perhaps two feet wide, of Jacques-Louis David’s _The Death of Socrates_ on the wall straight across from the bed. It’s framed in smooth black wood, with a brass plaque giving the title and artist, just like in a museum. Adhira wonders if it’s supposed to be inspirational. It’s certainly a fair portrait of defiance in the face of certain death (and at the same time an oddly morbid exhortation to duty and self-sacrifice). Still, a bit of an odd choice for a place of recovery from serious injury, and Adhira wishes, sometimes, that she’ll walk in the room and find Socrates at last having drunk his punishment and peaceful in a martyr’s death or—alternatively—fled, the scene he’s left behind, framed in black wood, one of violent rebellion. His eternal balancing act on the brink of death—one hand reaching for but not quite touching the fatal cup of hemlock, even as his attention is elsewhere—is exhausting to witness.

It’s impossible, at any given time, to tell how many patients are being cared for. Adhira assumes most of the other staff—doctors, nurses, technicians of various sorts and specialities—work on single cases, like herself, and only interact with other members of the same team. The odds of finding another staff member in the lounge on any given visit are split even, and while no one has ever instructed Adhira _not_ to speak to any other staff members, she never has. A nod is the extent of the communication she’s exchanged with another member of staff, and quite often not even that exchange takes place.

There was one exception, and an exceptional event it was in _more_ than one way. Whatever you’d call this approximation of a ward most accurately, what it most certainly is _not_ is an emergency department, but for once. Once, a cry of “all hands” and hardly any sound at all as staff poured from rooms right and left on this corridor, right and left down the next. Well-oiled hinges and latches released the occupants without any protests, the only noise the echoing wailing of the single patient on a gurney, blood everywhere, one leg missing below the knee. He writhed against the bonds of the back board he’d been transported on, and a purple bruise was blooming above his left ear. _Possible head injury, needs stabilisation._ Adhira braced his head while half a dozen doctors and nurses took up positions elsewhere. No one knew where to go, and at least two minutes passed—an eternity, on the timeframe of emergency medicine—while a dozen pairs of hands were soaked and salted in a man’s blood and sweat and two dozen more looked on.

After the seemingly interminable torture of those two minutes, it ended quickly. A flurry of footsteps heralded the entrance of a paramedic team, black-clad and briskly professional, who swept away the bleeding, screaming amputee as quickly as he’d come upon the scene.

It was a strange enough occurrence that Adhira’s brain might have simply failed to encode it. Unable to parse the oddity, her synapses might have just laid it aside with the result that it could have been forgotten. But it wasn’t.

In his flailing, the patient had knocked over a potted plant, a Christmas cactus sitting on one of the very non-hospital-like side tables stood at intervals along the corridors, all of the same highly-polished reddish wood, with legs curving inward to a slim taper above their ball ends, felted in billiard green on their bases to protect the stone tile of the floor below. The knocked-over cactus had resulted in a spill of sandy soil over the wood and onto the floor. A bloom from the cactus—bright pink and entirely out of season with the name of the plant, given that it had been June at the time—had fallen and been crushed into the sand on the tile by an errant step. Table, broken ceramic, sand, and a crushed flower: nothing so significant, except by association, but now whenever any of the Christmas cactuses blooms, Adhira remembers that strange day, that strange event.

All of this is to say that the Kingsman long-term care facility does not bear much resemblance to the wards Adhira trained in and works in whenever she’s not under contract with “Kingsman” (clearly a code name, of course; Kingsman is a bespoke tailor on Savile Row).

The evening shift is duller than the day; Adhira has taken care of PBC’s massage, bath, and even changed his bed linens. There’s nothing to do but sit in the lounge, brainstorming, considering, and discarding excuses to enter PBC’s room and observe at least some of the general shape of T&L’s visitation. The excuses are discarded, one by one, because none passes the muster of being actually defensible, and while Adhira is curious (and doesn’t particularly believe that curiosity is a crime), she’s not–

Her pager vibrates on her hip, and Adhira jumps up before even reading the message, which can really only be one: NURSE CALL.

She still knocks before entering, and it’s T&L’s voice that tells her to come in.

“He scratched at the I.V.”

T&L is sat in the guest chair, angled very close to the bed, almost touching it, one leg crossed primly over the other. From some mysterious location, he’s procured two tumblers of alcohol (Scotch, at a guess). One sits on top of the monitor for PBC’s pulse oximeter, the liquid shivering slightly with each gentle beep. The other sits on the bedside table at T&L’s elbow, and there’s less than half a finger left in the glass. Something inside Adhira crows, just taking in the scene, because there is _so much to dissect_ , but the part of her that’s damn good at her job smothers it and begins to explain.

“That’s a good sign, and consistent with–”

T&L _interrupts_. “I’m aware of what it means and doesn’t mean. It also signifies that he might be uncomfortable.”

Adhira didn’t expect to be patronised to. The shock robs her of eloquence. “Uncomfortable?”

“Could you perhaps do something for his _itch_?”

Adhira doesn’t bristle too noticeably at his brusque tone or wilt under his scrutiny. Maybe the tips of her ears feel a little hot, but thank God for being brown because a blush doesn’t really show. She lifts PBC’s IV-strung hand to examine it. It’s her job to change the line every three days, usually, because that’s the kind of thing done on the day shift, but the colleague she’s doing the doubles for this weekend took her Wednesday and did the change then. He’s used IV3000 for the over-tape, instead of her usual Tegaderm, and there’s a bloom of red around the edges.

“I’ll go get what I need to change the line,” Adhira explains under the weight of T&L’s expectant gaze, “It looks like he’s allergic to this dressing.”

T&L is standing when Adhira returns, and he’s a shadowy presence behind her as she changes the line. She’s working on “his” side of the bed, putting the new line in PBC’s opposite hand. She can smell the Scotch, either from the glass or from T&L’s breath, it’s hard to know. When she’s finished, she straightens and steps back, right into him. He must not have been paying attention; he startles and even touches her briefly, a hand on her left shoulder, warm and heavy to steady them both.

“Sorry, I’ll–” He steps back. “Excuse me.”

Her hands occupied with familiar tasks—cleaning up the detritus of sterile packaging, moving the IV pole and hooking it up, removing the old line—Adhira ruminates. T&L is familiar with the symptoms signalling the progression from coma to vegetative state, and presumably familiar with the fact that it’s statistically unlikely that a person who persists in the vegetative state for longer than a few weeks, a month at the outside, will ever regain full consciousness. He knows what a crucial time this is, then, and it’s (understandably) put him on edge. _Why_ , though? Is it the guilt of responsibility for a lower-ranking officer, the loyalty of one half of a solid partnership, or, most intriguingly, the near heartbreak of a lover over his severely injured partner?

T&L returns, somewhat predictably, with a tea for Adhira. She’s sat on the edge of the bed, applying a prescription strength corticosteroid cream to the rash from the IV3000 with a Q-tip. She finishes at her own pace: discarding the Q-tip, washing her hands for good measure, and updating PBC’s chart; T&L hovers and watches, as per his usual. When Adhira returns her attention to him, he’s conjured the Scotch bottle from _somewhere_ , and he holds it up and tilts it toward her.

“I brewed something different. Gunpowder. It goes well with Scotch.”

“Sure, just a little.” Adhira couldn’t really _not_ accept. This feels like it might be T &L’s–

“Galahad,” he says, holding out the paper cup of gunpowder-and-Scotch for her to take.

“What?”

“I’m called Galahad, and he’s Merlin.”

Not just an apology then. Permission to enter.

Adhira has a feeling she’s still not supposed to respond by introducing herself. It’s not as if– What she’s been given are codenames, clearly, and she doesn’t have similar to offer in return. She steers the conversation in another direction: “Is he a wizard then?”

Galahad smiles at the question. “Of the technical variety.”

“Any sufficiently advanced–”

“Yes, quite.”

Adhira takes a sip of the doctored tea. The tea is smoky, and the Scotch peaty, and the overall effect is of a very elegant, very smooth mouthful of dirt. She takes another sip to decide if she likes it, and concludes, yes, this is a taste she might already be on the road to acquiring. Possibly every cup of Kingsman-brewed tea was a step on a tow-path next to this road.

“Have a seat, please,” Galahad says, retaking his own seat in the only chair. Adhira perches on the bed, Merlin’s knees just behind her.

“I’m sorry I was short with you earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve had far worse.”

“That doesn’t excuse my behaviour.”

Adhira shrugs. Time to change the subject. “Have you tried to get his attention at all?”

Galahad clears his throat. “I still talk to him. Occasionally.”

“Just chatting to him?”

Galahad nods.

“Hmm. Nothing like–” She twists, plucking Merlin’s hand from the bed and arranging it over hers in her lap, her thumb and his interlocked. (In her peripheral vision, she can see Galahad tensing, then attempting to cover it with a hasty sip from his tumbler of Scotch.) “Merlin, squeeze my hand.”

She waits, his hand limp in hers.

“Nothing,” Galahad summarises.

“He doesn’t know me. You try. He might respond to a familiar voice.”

“Ah, but he’s not accustomed to taking orders from me. Quite the reverse.”

“Humor me.” Adhira lifts Merlin’s hand from her lap and scoots to the side. Galahad takes Merlin’s hand in both of his, running his fingertips lightly across Merlin’s wrist as he settles everything to his liking.

“Merlin, squeeze my hand,” Galahad parrots.

“If you’ll excuse the expression, try it with a little more feeling.”

“Merlin,” Galahad starts, with little more punch behind it this time, “squeeze my hand.”

“Somewhat better.” Adhira scoots farther back, sipping at her tea and trying to melt into the scenery. “Again.”

“Merlin, you stubborn insufferable bastard, squeeze my goddamn hand.”

Galahad inhales sharply, and Adhira doesn’t have to wait for him to tell her; it’s clear from the wilt of his shoulders and the relief that spills from him in a sigh: he felt _something_ through their connected hands. Merlin _responded_.

When Adhira returns for the start of her double the next day, she can’t decide if she’s surprised to see that the tumbler of Scotch Galahad had poured for Merlin—the one that had kept time with Merlin’s heartbeat—is gone. She checks the drawers in the side table, but they are empty of tumblers and bottle. All of it could have been a dream, except for the note she herself made in Merlin’s chart: “23:21—patient responded physically to a verbal command.”

* * *

Thirteen days are counted, with his responses growing steadily more and more consistent, before Merlin regains (non-minimal) consciousness. Galahad is not there for it; he’s not been to the ward in a little over forty-eight hours, by Adhira’s observation paired with the visitor logs kept by her counterparts. With sign-off from his physician and an eye to preventing further attempts at self-extubation, Adhira had extubated Merlin on day five, so when he wakes, at least it’s not to the choking horror of intubation. Instead, as it turns out, it’s to the horror of a malfunctioning memory.

Adhira isn’t supposed to answer any of the questions he’s asking: “Where am I? Who are you? What happened? How did I get here?” She doesn’t even know the answers to the last of these, of course, and arguably doesn’t even have a good answer to the first, but that doesn’t stop him from asking. It doesn’t stop his agitation, either; eventually she’s no choice left but to sedate him with 100 migs of hydroxyzine, intramuscular. He doesn’t sleep, but he’s certainly calmer. His eyes follow her around the room as she works. She leaves for the loo, and lunch, and then an update from his physician. When she returns he’s still woozy but awake. He looks at her and frowns. “Do I know you?” he asks.

She couldn’t say, later, what made her say it: “You don’t remember waking up to my pretty face?”

“No.” He’s gruff; irritated. “I don’t.”

* * *

Adhira shouldn’t be watching this, but the door had been left slightly open (odd, that), and so she hadn’t knocked. The morning light from the East-facing window renders the image in dark silhouette only, but even with the lack of detail, it’s too private of a moment for her to witness comfortably. And yet, she’s frozen, afraid that any motion on her part will draw their attention and maybe, also (if she’s honest), a little reluctant to look away.

Merlin would be angry to know that she’s describing it in her head as “Galahad is kissing Merlin” because despite the hospital bed and the weakness from weeks upon weeks under a coma and the traumatic brain injury, Merlin isn’t _helpless_ , he’d have her know. Adhira half-smiles at the indignation of the Merlin in her head even as she watches. Galahad is leading the kiss, himself sat on the edge of Merlin’s bed, facing away, facing the window, so he’s had to twist that long torso in its bespoke suit in order to lean over Merlin, his forearm and elbow pressed into Merlin’s pillow, his other hand holding to one of the rails of the bed for balance. Merlin has one arm around Galahad’s back and the hand with his IV line in it is cupping Galahad’s cheek. They move together slowly, and because of the light and the silhouetting, Adhira can’t tell if their eyes are closed, but she imagines they are.

Their lips separate, and another wave of adrenaline floods through Adhira, because now, _now_ she might be caught in this unintentional act of voyeurism, but–

Not yet. Galahad breathes heavily above Merlin, but he can’t seem to tear himself away. Instead he peppers small kisses around Merlin’s mouth—the corner of it, Merlin’s jaw, Merlin’s cheek. When they’ve both caught their breath enough, there’s a silent negotiation, lips almost touching but then not as the angle changes or Merlin shifts his hand from Galahad’s cheek to thread his fingers into the short hair just above the nape of his neck instead. There’s another moment when Adhira wonders if this is it, it’s almost over for her, because the negotiation is failing, unsuccessful and edging into awkward, and maybe they are going to give up, but then Merlin surges up and pulls Galahad’s head down at the same time, and their mouths connect too hard—Galahad grunts his displeasure—but they’ve reconnected, and that’s all that they needed. Merlin leads at first, holding Galahad in place to kiss him more deeply. But his strength ebbs quickly, and he sags down into the bed again with relief and a low, almost-inaudible moan. Galahad retakes control and presses him down, twisting further and leaning lower until he’s almost laying on Merlin, chest-to-chest.

Merlin ends the kiss, pushing weakly at Galahad’s shoulders until he can gulp for air. Galahad collapses from his perch, going down onto his elbows, his head falling into the curve of Merlin’s neck and shoulder. He turns his head there, and Merlin groans again, eyes sliding closed, feet kicking restlessly in the sheets.

Galahad burrows in closer, and Adhira almost feels the low, quiet vibrations of his voice as he says something close to Merlin’s ear. She can’t make it out, and it’s yet another reminder that she shouldn’t be watching. She takes half a step back and starts to pull on the handle of the door with the utmost of gentle slowness, but it starts to whine, high-pitched and piercing in a way that has her whipping her head left and right to see if anyone else has noticed. She’s forced to halt, still with a line of sight and within earshot of the scene within the room, and so she hears the sentence that will invade her thoughts for days to come: “You’re not going to convince me,” Merlin starts lightly, “that I ever could have forgotten _this_.”

No answer and no sound follow, though Adhira waits, just there outside the lacquered wood door, shining and smelling of lemon-scented polish.

When the car drops her at her building, she doesn’t go inside. The temperature has dropped again, even though it’s still light out at the end of her shift these days. She walks despite the cold, gloveless because she forgot them, shivering. She walks three circuits past the corner store and on the fourth caves to temptation.

Her hand gets colder, holding the cigarette, but the smoke and the chemical calm warm from within. (It’s a disappointing fact, but a fact nonetheless: smoking rates among nursing professionals not just equal but _exceed_ those of the general population. Not so among other medical professionals, but it’s the nurses who see the worst of it: pain, suffering, indignity, defeat. It’s nurses who overhear things like _You’re not going to convince me that I ever could have forgotten_ this _._ )

Adhira smokes a second cigarette down to the filter before she goes home.

**Author's Note:**

> [Jacques Louis David's The Death of Socrates](http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436105)
> 
> I don't actually have receipts for the factoid about smoking rates in nursing professionals for the U.K., but there's [this](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8151902) for the U.S.


End file.
